Oh FFS (Part XXXIV)

 Well, I'm 50. How the F did that happen? 

 Celebrated by waking up 3 hours early when the online generator took a shit at 0130, plunging the HQ into darkness while in the middle of a cargo discharge rafted up to a ship at anchor. 

 Darker than 3 feet up a well digger's ass when that happens. The silence is eerie, as we were just transferring diesel, which uses an electric pump the size of a 55 gal drum but is whisper quiet. Our heavy fuel pumps are run by big diesel engines, but the MGO (Marine Gas Oil, which is fancy talk for diesel) pump is pure golden silence... and even more silent when it's not on. 

    Gen threw off the serpentine belt when the idler pulley broke. I had the same thing happen to another gen just 3-4 months ago, so swapping out and rereeving the belt was a quick job. My partner B had already fired up the standby gen and put it online, so we were back in action in 5 minutes, but I wasn't falling back asleep after that wake up call so I went ahead and unfucked things on the dead gen. She fired up shortly after. 

   But it was kind of nice to hear the waves slapping off the hull, a nearby bell buoy dinging nearby, things like that.  I forget how much the constant background noise masks. 

 And yeah, I'm 50. Still trying to figure that one out.